Truvia Fruit Flies

Certain Artificial Sweeteners May be Toxic to Fruit Flies

Find out why that doesn’t necessarily mean you should avoid them.

Certain Artificial Sweeteners May be Toxic to Fruit FliesFind out why that doesn’t necessarily mean you should avoid them.

Cai Chuqing/Shutterstock.com

This summer, your zero-calorie sweetener can double as an insecticide. Erythritol, the sugar alcohol in Truvía, kills fruit flies pretty quickly, according to a new study published in the journal PLOS ONE.

For the study, Drexel University researchers kept fruit flies in vials, each with an equal amount of Truvía, Equal, Splenda, Sweet'N Low, or Pure Via (sucrose and corn syrup served as controls). It turns out, the fruit flies that gobbled up Truvía lived an average of just 5.8 days, while the others had lifespans of 38.6 to 50.6 days.

It's not clear what makes erythritol so toxic in insects, but you shouldn’t be too worried about it sweetening your coffee, says study co-author Daniel Marenda, Ph.D., an associate professor of biology at Drexel University.

Sure, fruit flies have pretty similar brains to humans (which is why they're so often studied), but it's common for substances that are well tolerated in people to have toxic effects on other animals, says Marenda. Xylitol, another common sugar substitute, for instance, can trigger liver failure in dogs.

What's more, some previous studies have looked at erythritol's effects on humans, finding it doesn't hurt our noggins—even in high doses. For instance, in one European Journal of Clinical Nutrition study, when adults were given up to 50 grams of erythritol in a single dose, the worst side effect was nausea and tummy rumbling. It's also worth noting that erythritol has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a food additive since 2001.

So unless new research on humans comes out against erythritol, you can keep using it in your coffee and tea. And who knows—maybe soon, it'll also be approved for pest control.